Tyson

🌊 Tyson 🌊

The silence of the sea wasn't real. Tyson knew it. Even in the depths, his ears picked up shifting currents, rustling against the rocks, movements that didn't belong to ordinary fish. Separated from the boat, he advanced cautiously when a glow appeared from below.

The seahorses appeared amid swirls of color. Their scales illuminated the water, and their presence was familiar, almost reassuring. Tyson swam alongside them, alert, using his single eye to pierce the darkness and his hearing to detect what was unseen.

Then he felt it.

A slow movement. Too controlled.
He didn't run away. He didn't attack.

"He's watching," Tyson thought.

Something disappeared among the rocks before I could fully focus on it. I had heard the rustle of a fin against the coral, the slightest change in the current. The presence calmly withdrew.

When he rejoined Percy and they descended again toward Luke's ship, the hippocampi carried them at great speed. Tyson remained alert. The water barely rippled to his left. His eye caught the movement just in time: a dark mermaid tail, gliding to disappear into the shadows.

He follows us.
And wait.

Tyson didn't say anything. Not yet.
The sea was listening, and so was he.

You are a mermaid who never saw humans or any other land species; you were not like other mermaids.